Witness an Episode of Clean Sweep

We’ve spent hours unpacking our wedding gifts and our apartment is a disaster area, COVERED with open boxes, mountains of china, stemware, kitchen appliances and millions of little pieces of styrofoam and sheets of bubble wrap.

Disaster zone.

“This is soooo comfy,” I call out to Brian. I’m submerged in a box the size of a small bathtub brimming with styrofoam packing peanuts. We’ve both run out of steam earlier than expected.

Brian pulls me up and I stumble out, adjust the “hard at work in the home” bandana that’s tied around my hair and return to the kitchen to continue tearing it apart.

We’ve made three piles, like on Clean Sweep: Things we’re definitely keeping but can’t find anywhere to put in our one-bedroom apartment (our fancy schmancy china), things we need to return and the old stuff we’re going to give away to our sisters whether they want it or not.

But by 6:00 we’re starting to get punchy. Styrofoam bits adhere to my hands. I pick them up and try to throw them away and I’m throwing and they’re still sticking. It’s like an unamusing vaudeville act.

We cave and take a break to order pizza. When it arrives I go to the kitchen, open the cupboards and gaze lovingly at our pristine china. Not yet. I have to give the new dishes some time to acclimate. I don’t want to traumatize them.

We have some perfectly nice leftover “Happy Birthday” paper plates and I dig those out instead.